Is ‘Amasia’ the Earth’s next supercontinent?

All of the Earth’s continents may one day get crushed together at the North Pole to form a single, massive supercontinent, according to a team of Yale scientists.

Their model, dubbed “Amasia,” would bid good-bye to the Arctic and Caribbean Oceans as, over the course of 50-200 million years, North and South America move north, according to a report published in the journal Nature.

“[This would lead] to a collision with Europe and Asia, more or less at the present day North Pole,” Yale geologist Ross Mitchell told a Nature podcast.

“Australia would also, according to our model, most likely continue its northward motion and snuggle up next to India.”

Mr. Mitchell and his colleagues say they believe supercontinents – massive continents formed by other continents squishing together over millions of years – form at 90 degrees from each other.

Mr. Mitchell — who specializes in paleomagnetism, or tracking rocks by measuring their magnetism — and a group of his colleagues at Yale analyzed ancient rocks to create a map of their locations around the globe over time. They used that data to map how the Earth’s mantle causes continents to move over time.

According to their findings, the formation of supercontinents follow a pattern – Pangaea (the most recent supercontinent, which separated about 300 million years ago into the continents as we know them today) formed at 90 degrees to the Rodinia, the supercontinent before it, which in turn formed at 90 degrees to the supercontinent before it, Nuna.

Mr. Mitchell calls this model the “orthoversion.”

Until now there have only been two models for how supercontinents form. The first, called the introversion model, holds that supercontinents rip apart and come back together in roughly the same place, Mr. Mitchell said in the podcast.

In this model, the Atlantic would have been formed by a supercontinent ripping apart, and would disappear again when the continents drifted back to their original formation.

The other model, called the extroversion model, theorizes that when supercontinents come apart the individual continents travel around the globe to form a continent on the other side.

According to the new orthoversion model, the Caribbean and the Arctic oceans will be the first ones to close.

All this occurs because of continental drift – continents move imperceptibly each year, with the rate of movement varying depending on the land mass.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the Arctic Ridge has the slowest rate of movement, at 2.5 centimetres a year, and the East Pacific Rise near Easter Island has the fastest rate, at more than 15 centimetres per year.